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Social Media Marketing: Social Media Summary for Guernsey Business’s
Social media marketing is engagement with online communities and audiences to generate business exposure, opportunity and further sales or interaction. Key advantages include generating exposure for the business, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships and relationships with audiences. There are many methods and dynamics associated with SMM, this article aims to highlight the key areas in which SMM can be advantageous to business.
Why use Social Media?
While core business websites provide audiences with information and services, they centre around sales and the promotion of core business values. Social Media systems allow businesses to develop an area, both integrated and separate to their core website, to build a framework for interaction, distribution and analysis of audiences.
Does your Brand have a Friendly Face?
Although many customers today feel comfortable communicating with businesses from behind a computer screen rather than engaging in physical interaction, many customers long for a personal and reassuring touch from businesses. Both current customers and prospective ones are increasingly looking for a real connection with brands. Often audiences favour interaction and reassurance over static information distributed via traditional business websites. Social Media systems allow businesses to develop a personal connection with clients and promote values of trust and community that would perhaps dilute the purpose of traditional business websites.
Whats the Value in been Social?
Your customers are likely searching for your business online; their search for information and their decision making process regarding the engagement with your products/services does not stop with your website. Increasingly customers base their decisions based on social information. In short, why engage with a business based on their marketing pitch or website, when you can speak with your friends or receive an impartial recommendations from people you trust? In this context SMM can be extremely powerful in that it nurtures a community around your products and services, that in turn aids the decision making process of others. People look for transparency from brands, the brands they trust are the ones that have little to hide and join the conversation.
Your Employees can do more for your business than physically provide your product or service. By utilising social media, they can further interact with your audiences to provide a personal touch to client communications. In short, their personality can also become synonymous with your brand.
Your Business Partners/Affiliates can add real value to your SMM campaign. By interacting with other relevant organisations and affiliates in a community driven environment, you are able to add credibility to your brand. For example, connecting publicly via Facebook with supporting organisations or governing bodies of standards can re-assure your onlooking audience. Social media can also provide businesses with the opportunity to connect with others offering a similar service in a different region, this can allow both businesses to expand their relative audience or potential customer base. In short don’t be afraid to “share”, it is the key principal of SMM, you only gat back what you put in.
Social Networking Websites
Such examples include Facebook (Social), LinkedIn (Business). There primary relevance been interaction with clients, building connections, monitoring audiences wants/needs. Often such tools can be customised to match business branding.
Social Bookmarking Websites
Social bookmarking sites allow users to save, share and search web pages. Such examples include Digg and Stumbleupon. There primary relevance been link building and SEO. Submitting content to websites such as these often leads to content been indexed by search engines faster due to there relative SEO authority.
Micro-Blogging
Such examples include Twitter and Tumblr. These platforms provide another SEO efficient platform to contribute to link building and SEO strategy. They are predominately real-time in nature, in that the immediacy and timing of publishing content to platforms like Twitter can have great effect. Search engines are beginning to index real-time content from such systems to further aid users in finding up to date and relevant content.
Video & Photo Sharing
Such examples include YouTube for Video and Flickr for Photo’s. These platforms provide a great way to share multimedia content with users, without the hassle of hosting them on your own servers. YouTube video’s embed easily into Wordpress driven blogs and allow businesses to easily share video and multimedia content on their websites.
